01 August 2006

A few more words to the wise...

Theories and goals of education don’t matter a whit if you do not consider your students to be human beings. — Lou Ann Walker

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to thepeople who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X [that's one scary bloke]

There are young people out there cutting raw cocaine with chemicals from the local hardware store. They are manufacturing new highs and new products buy soaking marijuana in ever changing agents, and each of these new drugs is more addictive, more deadly and less costly than the last. How is it that we have failed to tap that ingenuity, that sense of experimentation? How is it that these kids who can measure grams and kilos and can figure out complex monetary transactions cannot pass a simple math or chemistry test? — Senator Kohl, from the U.S. Senate Hearing: “Crisis in Math and Science Education.”

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened. — Douglas Adams, from his book: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible; reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless. — Max Born

The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done — men who are creative, inventive and discoverers. — Jean Piaget

People should be free to find or make for themselves the kinds of educational experience they want their children to have. — John Holt

That’s why it comes back to math. Math has no bias. It doesn’t come from TV. It doesn’t know what you’re wearing. Math treats all people equally. Especially when you’re in a hard class with all boys, when nobody’s cheering you on from the sidelines, when it’s not “cool” to be smart, math is a nice thing to have. When nothing else makes sense, math reaches an answer. — Rebecca L. Eisenberg, in Girls Need Math, in the Examiner.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Meade

The most important outcome of education is to help students become independent of formal education. — Paul E Gray

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old. — Lord Chesterfield

Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other. — Emma Goldman

The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. — Paul Karl Feyerabend

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they’re going to catch you in next. — Franklin P Jones

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. — John Cotton Dana

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think. — James Beattie

Mildly, moderately, highly and extraordinarily gifted children areas different from each other as mildly, moderately, severely and profoundly retarded children are from each other, but the differences among levels of giftedness are rarely recognized. — Dr. Linda Silverman

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. — Henry Brooks Adams

Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, “We’ve always done it this way.” I try to fight that. That’s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise. — Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

Resisting conformity and developing some small eccentricities are among the steps to independence and self-confidence. — A L McGinnis

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know. — Gilbert K Chesterton

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. — Bertrand Russell

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. — Thomas Huxley

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. — Decouvertes

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work. — Thomas Edison

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the illusion of knowledge. — Daniel Boorstin

Expecting all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children the same age to wear the same size clothing. — Madeline Hunter

The one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions. — Max Beerhohm

Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker’s already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs. — Florence King

The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion — these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness. — Jerome S. Bruner

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yates

Do not judge my intelligence by the answers I give, but instead by the questions I ask. — Mark McGranaghan

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. — John Maynard Keynes

Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental... The freedom to learn... has been bought by bitter sacrifice. And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to learn, the right to have examined in our schools not only what we believe, but what we do not believe; not only what our leaders say, but what the leaders of other groups and nations, and the leaders of other centuries have said. We must insist upon this to give our children the fairness of a start which will equip them with such an array of facts and such an attitude toward truth that they can have a real chance to judge what the world is and what its greater minds have thought it might be. — W E B DuBois

One can succeed at almost anything for which he has enthusiasm. — Charles Schwab

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t. — Malcolm S Forbes

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him — Jonathan Swift

Penguinista Archive

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Who is Leon?

John Tukey

Better to havean approximate answerto the right questionthan a precise answerto the wrong question.

Bernard Shaw

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;the unreasonable one persists in tryingto adapt the world to himself.Therefore all progress dependson the unreasonable man.

Albert Einstein

It is nothing short of a miraclethat modern methods of instructionhave not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.For this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation,stands mainly in need of freedom.